Around Us 06-04-10

By the PDH

Published 6:31 am, Friday, June 4, 2010

LUBBOCK - The Lubbock Independent School District board of trustees hired Mark Hinshaw as the district's new police chief and approved Superintendent Karen Garza's plan to assign 10 new school principals for the 2010-11 school year at a called meeting Thursday morning.

Many of the new principals are being reassigned from principal positions at other schools, including Joe Williams, who will be the new principal of Monterey High School.

Williams is the current principal of Roy Roberts Elementary School and follows Al Griggs, who will be assigned as the director of the Byron Martin Advanced Technology Center and LISD-TV.

Brown Elementary Principal Lori Alexander will be moved to Smith Elementary to replace Jim Andrus, who is moving to a secondary school administrative position in the district.

Staci Sumners will replace Alexander as principal of Brown Elementary. She has been serving as an assistant principal at Bean Elementary and Jackson Elementary.

Glen Teal, principal of Centennial Elementary, has been named the new principal at O.L. Slaton Middle School. Teal succeeds Shelly Bratcher, who has been named the implementation coordinator for the new C-Scope district curriculum.

Johnna Weatherbee, principal of Stewart Elementary, will become the principal at Iles Elementary School. It was announced in March that current Iles Principal Brian Yearwood would become the new principal of Dunbar Middle School.

Weatherbee's position at Stewart Elementary will be filled by Stace McEwin, currently the principal at Ramirez Charter Elementary School. Nancy Parker, who is an assistant principal at Atkins Middle School, will be the new principal of Ramirez.

WASHINGTON D.C. - South Plains spelling champion Elliot Hanna correctly spelled both of the words given to him Thursday in rounds of the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee, but he did not advance to the semifinal competition today.

The 13-year-old Levelland Middle School student, who was sponsored by The Avalanche-Journal, received three points each for spelling "saboteur" in the second round and "nastaliq" - a form of Arabic script - in the third round. However, he did not spell enough words correctly in the first round, which was a written test given to all the spellers, to give him enough points to advance, John Hanna said.

The points were added up from the written test and the two rounds at the microphone. After the point totals were computed, 226 spellers were eliminated, John Hanna said. - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

• • •

CANYON - A Canyon-based beef marketing co-op has asked a federal judge to issue a court order barring public disclosure of sales information federal investigators are seeking as part of a civil probe into whether meatpackers are manipulating or controlling cattle prices across the country.

Last year, the Agriculture Department's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, known as GIPSA, subpoenaed numerous documents as part of a federal lawsuit against Consolidated Beef Producers, a marketing co-op of beef producers that represents about 200 cattle feedlots in Texas and 13 other states.

Consolidated Beef Producers, which said it's not a target of the federal investigation, filed a court motion this week asking a federal judge to issue an order protecting information about individual cattle buyers and sellers, sales prices, and other data it deems confidential trade secrets.

Consolidated said in court documents it believes the co-op can reach an agreement with government attorneys on a proposed court order if ordered to do so.

A federal judge is expected to hear arguments in the case today in Amarillo. - Amarillo Globe-News

(Contact Deborah Zacher at dzacher@hearstnp.com or 806-296-1360. Become her fan on Facebook.)